Ummah Wide’s
Medium User Guide
(Because sometimes you need to put a waterfall in your story)
Medium is a beautiful and easy to use platform that in many ways is like typing on a standard word processor, but with many extra built in features if you know how to use them. This is our quick guide to publishing on Ummah Wide with a series of links to Medium’s own user guides.
Think Visually
What are some visual’s that come to mind when you are thinking about the story you are telling? Write down a list of ideas and then begin the search for beautiful imagery.
Images: Most important is the header or cover image at the top of the article — this image will be visible everywhere you put your article on Medium and on Facebook so choose wisely. Here is an overview of Medium’s recommendations for adding images and sizing.
Searching for images
Ok so you have an idea about the images you want to use in your story, where can you find the perfect photo? There are a number of great open source image search engines, you just need to know how to use them.
Flickr: Search on the landing page for your image — on the page of images that will pop up under upload it says license — pull down the tab to “creative commons only” Flickr will automatically redo your search and you can use any of these images.
Google Image Search: Search for an image and then on the middle of the page after you have searched you will see a box that says search tools. Then click on usage rights and click on anything but “Not filtered by license.”
GIF’s: This is also one of the easiest ways to search for Gif’s if you want to embed one of these short video’s in your story — search with google image search, click on search tools. Then click on Type and click on Animated, you will then only be searching GIF’s. Another good GIF search engine is Giphy.com
Haiku Deck: One last solid option where we find consistently great high quality images is on Haikudeck.com (also an iPad app) a startup where you can make beautiful presentations. Set up an account and click “Create New Deck,” click on the photo icon on the left and an entire search engine of creative common photos awaits you on the other side of your search.
From here view in full screen, save and export or take an image grab.
To take an image grab on a Mac click Command + Shift + 4 at the same time
For a great open source collection of Islamic themed photos organized by color check out our friends at Alchemiya.com Facebook image collection.
Medium’s guide to Stock photo’s that don’t suck
Formatting
To see your formatting options highlight the text you want to change to a title or a quote. Your options are pretty straight forward, but we have outlined them below:
H1 — is the biggest and boldest font on medium
H2— is the middle font size and still in bold
H3—is normal font but still bigger than the regular font size
The only other ways to play with your text fonts is with the quotation mark on the style bar. You have two options here and they are — italicized with this black quote bar when you click the quote bar once.
For the next option click the quote button a second time, and the second quote option pops up which allows you to write across the entire screen and can really make a key point stick out.
Here are most of these options with the Medium keyboard shortcuts.
Click here for Medium’s writing and formatting guide.
Want even more tips and tricks click here.
Embed Everything
You can embed almost anything in your article including most video. To embed anything including: articles, YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, Tweets, Vines, Soundcloud, Rdio, etc. cut and paste the URL where you want the embed and hit enter… Sounds easy right?
I mostly use Google chrome and for some reason embedding on Medium doesn’t always work for me the first time I cut in a URL. I often paste in the URL the first time, it doesn’t work… so I delete it and paste it again, on the second time it almost always works.
More on Embed’s from Medium here.
Titles
One last check over everything and you are ready to put in your title and choose your permanent URL for your story. Check out this video for more details on titles.
Publishing on the Ummah Wide Collection
Our digital magazine is what Medium calls a “collection” of articles. This collection is managed by a couple of editors, which is why you must reach out to us first to publish with Ummah Wide. Once we have looked at some of your work we will add you as an author on Ummah Wide and you can then submit your story to the collection. From there we can edit and work with you on the layout of the piece and then we publish.
Submitting a story to us
There are a number of ways to get in touch with us, you can:
Tweet us at — @ummahwide
Send us a message on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/UmmahWide
Or email our editors at — dustin@ummahwide.com
Happy Writing and Designing!
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